It is, as they call it, the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, which means it is time for any and all traditions associated with said Wonderful Time. Perhaps your traditions include tacky sweaters or screaming matches with your weird uncle over basketball and/or human rights. They’re different in every household. But it feels safe to say that no matter how off-kilter your household’s method of commemorating the holidays and the end of the year is, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a couple of movies they have to sit down and watch during the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
Before we commence with this monthly column of hot takes and dissenting opinions, let the record state that I love the holidays and the traditions that come with them, even if someone’s traditions aren’t exactly my speed. I’ve got no room to judge anyone for what movies they want to put on come December and have a few weird ones myself. I’m far from a Whovian but for some reason must watch the Doctor Who special “The Day of the Doctor” between Thanksgiving and Christmas and for over ten years have almost always watched Michael Bay’s Transformers (a movie I don’t even like that much!) on December 25th. This is to say that I’d never legitimately disparage anybody’s film-centric holiday traditions.
THAT BEING SAID…
We have got to collectively figure out what is and isn’t a Christmas movie. As Twitter has become more Hot Take-Centric it’s been hard not to notice that every year a new take makes the rounds either declaring a tangentially-Christmasy-at-best movie (almost always a violent action flick) to be a definitive Christmas movie or that a long-standing holiday staple is not, in fact, a Christmas movie. It’s exhausting! Being online is exhausting. Why do we do it?!
This December, we’re going to dive deep on this. Every week we’re going to take a look at a different so-called Christmas Movie and determine once and for all (once and for all!!) whether or not it is actually a Christmas Movie. As such, we must begin by first answering the question as best we can in this moment: what makes a Christmas Movie?
It’s not as simple as being set during Christmas. Holidays are more than set dressing, more than timing. I’ve got more love for Iron Man 3 than most but I’d never say that it qualifies as a Christmas Movie solely based on a collective three minutes in which Tony dances to a hip holiday tune and then buys Pepper a giant stuffed bunny.
No, a Christmas Movie is about mood, theme, and how it makes you feel when you watch it more than it is about the time in which the story takes place. The holidays in real life mean something different to everyone but the holidays in the world of movies function under a far less malleable array of emotions. If we’re going by the standard of the classics (films like It’s A Wonderful Life or Elf) a great Christmas Movie uses the inevitable coming together of families and loved ones during this time of the year as a device through which the importance of love, emotional honesty, and family (found or born) is explored. It’s a deep well to draw from and few approach it the same way twice as there are no specific tropes or emotional beats required to secure a place in the subgenre.
Moving forward we’ll be accepting this as the baseline definition of what makes a Christmas Movie, and under these guidelines it seems absolutely ludicrous that there are people out there who say that Home Alone isn’t a Christmas movie.
It feels borderline pedantic to recount the plot of a movie so thoroughly ingrained into our collective culture but for anyone who’s somehow uninitiated on this one, Home Alone follows 8-year-old Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) who is left home alone (ThatsChappieTweet.jpg) by his vacationing family over the course of the days leading up to Christmas. Thanks to a perfect storm of circumstances that include a power outage, an obnoxious kid neighbor, and the all-too-real chaos that comes with trying to organize a family vacation, the McAllisters oversleep the morning of their holiday flight to Paris and board their plane without the most precocious of their children. With phone lines down and the family an ocean away, Kevin is left to relish in the joys of living in a world free of supervision or consequence – that is, until a duo of bandits peg his house as their next mark, with Kevin as the only thing standing between them and his home.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: who on earth has said that Home Alone, a consensus all-timer in the field of Christmas Movies, ISN’T a Christmas movie? Please allow me to draw your attention to the Internet, a dumb place full of bad people with stupid doo-doo-brained ideas. Well, perhaps that’s a little harsh. Media juggernaut Bill Simmons is far from a doo-doo brain but he’s dead wrong about perhaps the hottest take he’s ever spouted, that being that Home Alone isn’t a Christmas Movie in a recent episode of the podcast (appropriately) titled The Hottest Take. He’s far from the only person to chime in on the matter but he’s easily the most well-known – and the one who’s made the strongest case against it.
I’m gonna die alone on this hill and that’s fine. https://t.co/ejGnQ9J05O
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) August 4, 2018
Simmons argues that Home Alone’s timing and setting during the Christmas season is entirely incidental and that the film could take place at any time. He also notes that any emotional resonance is diluted by the McAllister parents being about as neglectful as possible. Simmons is speaking from the perspective of a parent so hey, maybe your take on the movie changes once you have kids (I don’t).
However, framing the movie this way stems from a real “Daniel is actually the villain of The Karate Kid” point of view (for the record, he absolutely is not). It’s selective in its read of the film’s text and fails to take much of what makes the film both resonant as a movie and as a Christmas Movie into account.
Regarding the neglect of the parents, one of the elements of the film that may surprise you in its effectiveness is how empathetic it is towards them. The events leading up to their leaving Kevin behind are so meticulously crafted to create a situation in which it feels completely plausible that he would be lost in the shuffle. From the power going out (which causes their alarm clocks to reset, creating a mad rush to make their flight on time in the morning) to the number of family members traveling on the trip (it’s about 15 or so) to the fact that they travel to the airport in two vans, it’s the perfect storm of circumstance. You don’t condone their actions but you certainly understand how it may have happened. It’s also notable that the family goes out of their way to correct the error as soon as they realize what they’ve done, instantly disregarding their European vacation plans and instead moving the heavens to make sure their child is safe. It never feels like they see it as a burden or inconvenience. Rather, they’re ashamed of themselves, despite the circumstances being so out of their control.
There’s also no time of year in which this film could take place besides Christmas, both thematically and narratively. If you’re really trying to pick a fight you could argue that there are other seasons in which the vacation could take place. It could be a cruise in the summer or a trip to a lake house in August, sure. But it’s worth noting that the McAllisters aren’t the only family away from home in their neighborhood – nearly half a dozen other families have left the block for the holidays, which is why the Wet Bandits have marked the neighborhood as their next score. When you consider that and the fact that a winter storm has downed the phone lines, you’ve got the only situation in which a kid could be at home alone in the suburbs and not have a dozen neighbors storm in to rescue him at the behest of his parents.
But really, this is all splitting narrative hairs. We all know the real reason Home Alone has to take place during the Christmas season. It’s a movie about not realizing how much you need your loved ones until they’re gone. It’s explored both through Kevin and his parents, who both come to realize that they haven’t been as kind or empathetic as they could to one another. Kevin enjoys his stint of total freedom (and proves as precocious as he presents himself) but ultimately realizes that he isn’t ready for a world in which his family has disappeared.
This all also sets up the most touching emotional beat of the film, that being when Kevin finally talks to his creepy senior neighbor and, after getting to know him a bit, encourages him to reach out to his estranged son. It’s almost A Christmas Carol-esque in its poeticism. Kevin sees a glimpse of what a future without his loved ones could look like, but more importantly, he realizes it’s never too late to mend bridges you’ve long thought burnt.
Home Alone is absolutely a Christmas Movie, and one of the best of all time. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, ya filthy animals.
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